Page 71 of The Associate
He said nothing as his dark eyes found Samuel’s.
The moment their eyes connected, it happened.
The screaming chorus in his head, the one that had been a relentless, deafening cacophony for days, stopped.
It was as if a switch had been thrown.
Gael’s presence was a vacuum. It didn't just demand attention; it consumed the chaos around it, pulling the frantic energy out of Samuel’s mind and leaving behind a blank, breathless calm.
After a moment, Gael shifted his weight, moving aside just enough to create a path into the apartment beyond.
Samuel crossed the threshold as if moving through deep water. The apartment was as he remembered; a vast, silent space of pale wood and cool stone, the city a glittering tapestry beyond the glass. The air held the familiar, clean scent of lemon and sandalwood.
His gaze, unfocused at first, swept the room. Then it snagged.
In the exact center of the living room, positioned on the grey rug, was a single, elegant armchair. It was upholstered in a deep charcoal fabric, its lines severe and modern. And directly in frontof it was a single, dense cushion. It was a darker grey, almost black, a perfect square against the larger field.
He froze, his breath lodging in his throat. He stared at the chair, at the cushion, and the meaning of them slammed into him with the force of a physical blow.
Then he felt it. A presence, materializing from the silence behind him. He hadn’t heard a footstep.
The warm, solid wall of Gael’s chest pressed against his back. Breath ghosted over the sensitive skin at the nape of his neck, a faint, warm current that raised every hair on his body and sent a violent shiver down his spine.
A low voice, its vibration traveling through the point of contact between their bodies, spoke close to his ear. “Take off everything from the waist up and get on your knees, Samuel.”
Samuel whimpered. The sound was small, broken, ripped from a place beneath thought. Somewhere, faint and distant, the condemnatory voices tried to rally.
Abomination. Sinner. Sick.
But they were echoes in a far-off canyon. They had no power here. The reality was the heat against his back, the breath on his neck, the quiet command still ringing in the air.
His hands moved of their own volition. They shrugged off his wool coat, letting it slide from his shoulders to pool in a heap on the floor. His fingers, clumsy and cold, went to the buttons of his dress shirt. He pushed the shirt off his shoulders, letting it fall atop the coat. The air of the apartment was cool on his newly bared skin, raising gooseflesh over his arms and chest. He felt terrifyingly exposed, and yet the exposure itself was a strange relief.
“Good boy.”
The whisper was so close Gael’s lips brushed the shell of his ear. A bolt of pure, white-hot sensation shot through Samuel, straight to his core. His cock, already stirring from the proximity stiffened fully, achingly, against the confines of his trousers.
He should have been scalded with embarrassment. But in the hollow silence of his mind, only one thought formed, a desperate, silent plea:
Please. More.
Then the warmth was gone. The presence at his back withdrew.
Gael walked around him, a slow, unhurried circuit, and took his seat in the waiting armchair. He settled into it, his posture relaxed yet utterly poised. Then his dark eyes lifted, finding Samuel’s across the short expanse of the room.
The gaze pinned him. It held no cruelty, no impatience. It simply was. An expectation made flesh.
As if pulled by an invisible string, Samuel’s heavy legs carried him forward. He walked the few steps to the cushion on the floor and fell to his knees.
The room was quiet, the only sounds the faint, distant hum of the city and the too-loud rush of his own blood in his ears. He kept his eyes lowered, fixed on a point on the floor between Gael’s feet.
“Straighten your spine.”
Gael’s voice was calm. It held none of the office’s sharpness, nor the intimate murmur from the doorway.
Samuel adjusted, pulling his shoulders back. A muscle in his lower back protested.
The pad of Gael’s finger pressed against a specific vertebra between his shoulder blades. “Here. This is the axis. It does not curve. It is a column.”
